A GEORGE III MAHOGANY ARMCHAIR

This chair is similar in design to the fourteen armchairs which made up the Dumfries 'Drawing Room Suite', supplied to William, 5th Earl of Dumfries (d. 1768) by Thomas Chippendale in 1759 for Dumfries House, Ayrshire (see Dumfries House, A Chippendale Commission, volume I, Christie's catalogue, 12 July 2007, pp. 104 & 116-119). Chippendale was noted for never repeating a chair pattern, instead subtly altering exisiting fashionable patterns so as to avoid duplication, and these subtle variations in ornament are evident on this chair, when seen in the context of the Dumfries commission.

This elegant armchair is serpentined in the natural fashion lauded in William Hogarth's Analysis of Beauty, 1753; it typifies the style of 'French Chair' that Thomas Chippendale (d. 1779) and his Edinburgh-based partner James Rannie (d. 1766) adopted in the early 1750s as a trade-sign for their celebrated St. Martin's Lane cabinet-making and upholstery business. Chippendale, who also adopted the 'French Easy Chair' as a heading for their trade-sheet, devoted four plates to such chairs in The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, 1754-1762. Described there as 'French Elbow Chairs', they all featured Chinese or India patterned upholstery, which was noted as being in imitation of tapestry or needlework (C. Gilbert, The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale, 1978, fig. 13; and Chippendale's Director, pls. 17-20, 3rd ed.).